[GSTL3] Prelims - Day 1 Recap/Day 2 Preview

Table of Contents

Introduction

LG-IM jumped ahead to 1 - 0 in the preliminary round, and need only one more win to assure that they will be playing in GSTL proper. Tonight, they go up against FnaticRC, the team that eliminated them from the GSTL last season. Will revenge be on the menu tonight?

It was almost a given that the powerhouse LG-IM would defeat NS Hoseo. The only question was, who would they rely on from their embarrassing wealth of talent to get the job done? In the end, it wasn't their old school, multiple championship duo of Mvp and Nestea, nor their recent Team League workhorse Losira. Instead, it was their two newest stars, Seed and First, who only came into their own in the summer of 2012, who finished off NSH.

Aptly enough, LG-IM choose First to open for them in their first match of the season. Having lost much of their roster between seasons, NSH was forced to field the virtually unknown Brave as their starter, giving him his GSTL debut. Not surprisingly, Brave wasn't able to play well in his first appearance in the booth, and quickly lost to First's 3-gate blink stalker rush after missing a vital force field on his ramp.

The next player for NSH ended up being yet another fresh face in SalvatioN. Sadly, he wasn't able to live up to his namesake, and was yet more fodder for LG-IM as his 1/1/1 failed.

Down 0 – 2, NSH decided to deploy Jjakji as the third runner in their line-up, a common position for Jjakji in the past. Jjakji forced First to deal with another cheese rush, but unlike Salvation's 1/1/1, his hellion-marauder all-in took First off guard to give NSH a quick victory.

LG-IM decided to bring the big guns early, immediately throwing in Mvp to take on NSH's ace. Mvp made the interesting pick of the new GSL and GSTL map Abyssal City, a decision that turned out to be great for the viewers.

An exciting game ensued, as Jjakji and Mvp both went for marine-tank compositions and constantly fought for position over Abyssal City's two central ridges. The game slowly seemed to flow Mvp's way, as he had control of the ridges for the majority of the time, and used it to expand his influence across the map. When he hit Jjakji's base with a marine drop and took a thirty supply lead, it seemed that he was going to close the book on NSH's ace player.

However, Jjakji showed how marine-tank vs marine-tank can easily be turned around with smart positioning and good battle selection, and exploited the fact that Mvp's forces were split up on two separate ridges. Using divide and conquer tactics, Jjakji advanced on Mvp's positions and won two critical engagements to take a huge army lead. Mvp tried to get back in the game, but Jjakji refused to let go of his lead and slowly choked out the four-time GSL champion to even up the score.

With the score tied 2 – 2 and Jjakji building momentum, it was no surprise to see the LG-IM head coach go for one of his trademark head-scratcher roster choices (he would explain his reasoning later). IM's True came out to face Jjakji on Whirlwind, seeking to use the map advantage to defeat the NSH ace in a macro game. However, Jjakji proved to be more than up to the task of defeating the Code B player, using superior multi-tasking to wear him down in a long game.

With NSH having taken the lead for the first time in the series, Seed came up next to stem the tide. Another nail-biting game ensued on Cloud Kingdom, as Seed and Jjakji warily picked away at each other, both unable to force each other into initiating a game ending 200 vs 200 engagement.

After around thirty minutes of minor skirmishes and constant tactical movements, Seed finally managed to take one of the corner expansions, forcing Jjakji to move his army deep into Protoss territory. It was the opportunity Seed was waiting for, as he happily sacrificed the base to start an advantageous base trade. Instead of responding by going for the base trade in earnest, Jjakji made the mistake of trying to walk all the way back to save his main, but only succeeded in wasting time. Having lost all of his infrastructure, it was only a matter of time before Jjakji was overwhelmed by Seed and forced to GG.

NSH chose another Terran opponent for Seed, sending out Sculp on Ohana. Sculp seemed eager to play straight up with Seed in a macro game, going for a triple orbital build, but was anti-climatically defeated by Seed's 6-gate all-in. This put the score at 4 – 3 in favor of LG-IM, and NSH were forced to choose their final player.

In a surprise move, NSH decided to put their final hopes on Tassadar. Unfortunately, it was a move that did not pan out at all. In an ironic twist, the famous king of all-ins ended up being the one that fell to cheesy tactics, as his stargate strategy was no match for Seed's gas-steal four-gate rush. Tassadar GG'd out, giving LG-IM a 5 – 3 victory and the first win of the preliminary round.

While there was no cataclysmic battle to end it all, Seed and Jjakji played one of the most entertaining late-game TvP's we've seen in a while. The players were constantly active on the map, looking for ways to harass the opponent's economy and forcing them into taking a battle in a poor position. Jjakji even found a way to use tactical nukes to good effect, clearing away observers and controlling space by calling down nukes. However, the two were quite evenly matched, and neither would take the bait and commit to a poor battle. The ending turned out to be slightly disappointing, with Seed smartly going for the base trade, forcing the first serious error from Jjakji in the game. That ended up being the game ending error, and Jjakji never came back from giving Seed a massive head start in the base race.

It's a bit weird to award this to a player on the losing team, but Jjakji was slightly more impressive in defeat than Seed was in victory. Seed also got three wins, but it was against lesser opposition. Jjakji started off by defeating PvT specialist First with a clever all-in, and then he played beautifully to defeat Mvp in a straight up macro game. His game against True was also impressive, winning on the Zerg favored Whirlwind with superior play. Jjakji played Seed evenly for thirty minutes of the final game, where the result really could have gone either way until Seed made the winning move.

LG-Incredible Miracle

Fnatic RC

by Waxangel

Where they Stand

Not much has changed for Incredible Miracle since yesterday, so I'll point you at that preview post for the main details. Actually, we did learn something new: MC was confirmed to be part of the LG-IM roster yet again, as the SK-Gaming partnership persists for another season. It doesn't change all that much, except that it stacks LG-IM's roster even more ridiculously, and puts on more pressure for them to get a good result this season.

Tonight they'll go up against Fnatic RaidCall, a familiar foe. Fnatic was last season's Cinderella story, as their thin line-up of players somehow fought their way into the second round and just narrowly missed out on a playoff berth. They started off their run with a miracle victory against LG-IM, where ByuL shocked everyone by winning four consecutive games to topple the LG-IM juggernaut.

With barely any roster changes since last season, FnaticRC once again begin this season as one of the weaker teams in the GSTL. However, without ZeNEX or Liquid this time around, they find themselves closer to the bottom of the barrel. Like any 'foreign' team in the GSTL, there's not much pressure for them to get a good result here. If they repeat last season's success, then that's great, but if they get knocked out early, it's not like it would seriously disappoint anyone. As long as they don't suffer some truly ignominious defeat like an all-kill at the hands of Tassadar, GSTL is really a no-lose scenario for FnaticRC.

Unfortunately, there's not much foreigner left in this foreign team, as they've parted ways with ToD while NightEnD has returned to Europe. While it doesn't hurt the team's strength too badly, it does make them a slightly less interesting team for viewers to watch.

Despite their combined seven championships, Mvp and NesTea are known for not living up to expectations in the GSTL. Mvp is fairly good (just not four championships good), while Nestea is just straight up bad when he has to play for his team.

However, that probably won't be a problem at all against NSH, as everyone else on the team has picked it up greatly since last season. YoDa and Happy made it into this season's Code S, while LosirA has been a team tournament killer ever since rediscovering his magical touch this summer. First revealed himself as one of the finest PvT and PvP players in the world, and he should be more than up to the task of sniping any team's Protoss or Terran ace. Even YongHwa found his way into the limelight, going far at HomeStoryCup V to make himself known to the world.

And of course, there's Seed. After spending almost a year in the shadows after a break-out GSTL performance in 2011, Seed returned with powerful combination of unshakable determination and dark magic to become the Code S Season Three champion. More so than anyone on the team – with the exception of perhaps Mvp – he's shown the ability to take on pressure, control it, and use it to make himself even stronger. Going up against Liquid in the IPL TAC3 finals, it was Seed who defeated TaeJa and HerO consecutively to earn his team the championship.

With six Code S players, LG-IM might have both the deepest and top heavy roster in the GSTL. Only StartaleQ can really say they challenge them in terms of sheer aggregate talent, but they have that pesky never-won-first-place stigma to deal with.

On top of that, we've now confirmed SK_MC on the roster as well. Name value wise, that's a ridiculous pick-up, but in terms of past GSTL performance, MC is actually underwhelming. He's rather similar to Mvp in that he's a 'good' player for his team, but he doesn't go on those beastly, all-killing streaks that the super-aces from other teams manage to pull off. Even so, he's a ridiculous luxury to have. He can give you a couple of wins as a line-up player, or he can act as the most ridiculously overpowered sniper in the GSTL

FnaticRC

You could argue that last season was the season of the PatchZergs. TSL was the most prominent example, getting to the semi-finals with almost no wins from their non-Zerg players. FnaticRC wasn't as ridiculously reliant on Zergs as TSL, but Moon and ByuL were still very crucial to their run as they combined for eleven wins. It's not that Moon and ByuL wouldn't have been deployed if Zerg wasn't strong at the time, as they happen to be the 3rd and 4th best players on the roster in any scenario. However, now that Terrans have figured out Zerg to a much further extent than earlier this summer, it's difficult to predict if they'll be able to contribute to the same degree. Moon seemed to be decent at ASUS ROG Summer (insisting on his no-hive style all the way to a fourth place finish), but we've barely seen ByuL play since.

Oz is another major x-factor on the team, as he kept up his capricious nature in the GSTL as well as individual leagues, playing poorly in the first few games but coming through later in the tournament. Fnatic's Protoss ace seems to have fallen into another rut, which is bad news considering that there's almost no credible Protoss back-up on the team. After taking fourth at MLG Arena, he proceeded to bomb out of both MLG Raleigh and IEM Cologne, and then went 0 - 3 in his Up/Down group to miss out on Code S. FnaticRC don't really have much choice but to hope that the good Oz shows up, because they're too undermanned not to use him.

Luckily for FnaticRC, they have a player like aLive to anchor the team. Invisible as he may be, aLive is someone who can go head to head with other team's aces and pull off ridiculous multi-kill streaks, and might be the only reason that FnaticRC are competitive at all. Like Oz, aLive didn't bring the goods early on in the GSTL last season, but he came through big in the end, winning six games and almost getting the team to the playoffs. Like Oz, aLive has also had a bit of a poor stretch lately, also dropping out of Code S, but he's historically been a much more consistent player. He will undoubtedly have to be Fnatic RC's workhorse this season.

Overall outlook and prediction

While the LG-IM head coach's decision to stick to his guns and keep giving his lesser known players a chance in the GSTL is worrisome, it's still 10 Code S championships to 0 in the end. However, I'm now adjusting +1 win for the opposing team in all LG-IM matches since horror/dreamertt/true/ready are waiting in the wings.

The thing is, no matter how many "bad" players the coach decides to send out, IM doesn't have enough bad players for them to lose this match. Well, unless he sends out dreamertt, True, horror, and Ready, which I hope he isn't going to do.d

It was almost a given that the powerhouse LG-IM would defeat NS Hoseo. The only question was, who would they rely on from their embarrassing wealth of talent to get the job done? In the end, it wasn't their old school, multiple championship duo of Mvp and Nestea, nor their recent Team League workhorse Losira. Instead, it was their two newest stars, Seed and First, who only came into their own in the summer of 2011, who finished off NSH.